Alla får rum : en diskursanalys över föreställningar kring användares vistelse i bibliotekens offentliga rum

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus in Sweden on the library as a “public room” - a public space open to all. In light of this, the aim of this thesis were to explore existing discourses in the Swedish library-field surrounding users who use the libraries primarily in this capacity, i.e. users who use the libraries public open spaces without necessarily accessing in the library's other functions. The following research questions was formulated: How are users of the libraries public room categorised? What notions of the users are expressed in these categorizations? What discourses can be linked to these notions? How do the discourses relate to each other? To answer the research questions sixty-seven articles in three publications aimed at library professionals (Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i samhället and Framsidan) were analyzed. Using Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory and Hedemark and Hedman's (2002) four-step analytical model for discourse analysis, four discourses were identified: (1) educational, (2) democratic, (3) norm-critical, (4) market economy. The discourses, except the market-economy discourse, outlined democratic aims for the user's stay in the public room. The educational discourse aimed at fostering the user's ability to reason and function in society, the democratic discourse aimed at empowering the user while the norm-critical discourse aimed at enhance the user's ability to improve societal equality. The thesis concludes that there might exist disparities between how the library-field and the user attributes meaning to the concept “public room” and that further research is needed to define the concept